Syndicate

Nicos Poulantzas: State, class and the transition to socialism

August 5, 2015 -- Links International
Journal of Socialist Renewal -- We live in an era where too much of the
left, both in the USA and abroad, remains stuck to old orthodoxies and failed
strategies. Marxism is reduced to holy writ and rote, devoid of any ability to
either interpret or change the world.

In order to win, the left desperately needs to break away from past
habits and recover the ability to raise questions anew by using Marxist
methodology to formulate strategy. In this endeavour, there are a number of
thinkers we can profitably learn from; one of whom is Nicos Poulantzas. Despite
the limitations and contradictions within Poulantzas' methods, he was not
afraid to ask the right questions and to develop new strategies.

To that end, it is worth looking at Poulantzas' work in three areas: the
state, class and the transition to socialism.

I. Biography

Nicos Poulantzas was born in Athens, Greece, on the September, 21, 1936, to a
well-off family. A gifted student, Poulantzas studied law in Greece and became
involved in leftist politics. He was a supporter of the United Democratic Left
(EDA), the legal wing of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE). After completing
his legal studies, Poulantzas moved to France where he received a doctorate in
the philosophy of law and taught sociology at the University of Paris VIII from
1968 until his death.

It was in France that Poulantzas really began to politically mature.
According to Bob Jessop, a scholar of Poulantzas, he was influenced principally
by three strains of thought. One, French philosophy – Sartre, Althusser and Foucault. Second, Italian
political theorists such as Antonio Gramsci and theories of hegemony. And last,
Romano-German law.

His work developed in engagement with these three currents and produced
a unique synthesis on topics ranging from the state, social classes, fascism,
the collapse of the southern European dictatorships and political strategy.

Poulantzas moved politically from a existentialist-influenced Marxist in his
student years to Marxism-Leninism with Maoist and Althusserian sympathies.
However, by the end of his life, Poulantzas had broken with the KKE in the late
1960s, joining a Eurocommunist group known as the Greek Communist Party of the
Interior (KKE-I) that was opposed to the dictatorship of the colonels.

The KKE-I would be one of the forerunners of Eurocommunism, a break with
old orthodxies in the the hope of developing a democratic path to socialism.
Despite the fact that the KKE-I received a poor showing in the 1977 elections,
being eclipsed by the hardline KKE, and Eurocommunist formations would later
flounder, Poulantzas remained within that orbit.

By the time he died tragically of suicide at the age of 43 in 1979, Poulantzas
had moved politically away from Marxism-Leninism to a form of democratic
socialism. Since his death, Poulantzas has remained an important theorist and
reference point on political theory, strategy and state. Many currents and
prominent leaders within SYRIZA in Greece take inspiration from him.[1]

II. Poulantzas' theory of the state

Poulantzas' first major work, Political Power and Social Classes
(completed on the eve of May 1968), develops his regional theory of the
capitalist state within a (largely) Althusserian theoretical framework.
Poulantzas insists on a regional theory because he does not believe that there
can be a general Marxist theory of the state. Rather, he argues that Marxists
need to develop theories of the state corresponding to a particular mode of production (in
his case, the capitalist mode of production or CMP):

a regional instance (specifically the
political) can constitute an object of regional theory only in so far as it is
“isolated” (decoupe) in a given mode of production. The possibility of
constituting it as an object of science (i.e. constructing its proper concept)
does not depend on its nature, but on its place and function in the particular
combination which specifies this mode of production... The place assigned to
the political in the CMP depends on the particular theory of this mode, on its
specific type of articulation, and the
index of dominance and overdetermination, as expounded by Marx is Capital.[2]

Poulantzas, following Althusser, defines a mode of production as consisting of
three levels: the political, economic and the ideological, with their own
structures and results, each level is autonomous, but only relatively, since
there is a hierarchy among them and they are determined “in the last instance”
by the economic.[3]

By mode of production we
shall designate not what is generally marked out as the economic (i.e.,
relations of production in the strict sense), but a specific combination of
various structures and practices which, in combination, appear as so many
instances or levels, i.e., as so many regional structures of this mode... The
type of unity which characterizes a mode of production is that of
a complex whole dominated, in the last instance, by the economic. The
term determination will be reserved for this dominance in the last
instance.[4]

This method allows Poulantzas to undertake a separate investigation of
the state within the capitalist mode of production.

The role of the state in the capitalist mode of production is thus relatively
separate from the base. In contrast to the feudal mode of production, where the
state is directly involved in extracting surplus from the peasantry, the
capitalist state does not have to be. Rather, once the normal operations of the
law of value have been established, they allow the capitalist mode of
production to operate without direct extra-economic coercion. Thus, when I
apply for a job or am fired by a business, the state is not directly
involved in the process (although indirectly it establishes the legal framework
for that process to take place):

The character of the
economic in this mode of production, as a process of producing surplus value,
results from this separation, which converts the labourer himself into an
element of capital and his labour into a commodity. This combination determines
the specific autonomy of the political and the economic. Marx perceives it in
its two manifestations. (i) In its effects on the economic. For example, the
process of production in the CMP works in a relatively autonomous way, with no
need of the intervention of “extra-economic factors”, as is characteristic of
other modes of production. The process of expanded reproduction, as Rosa
Luxemburg rightly pointed out, is principally determined by the “economic factor”
of production of surplus value; purely economic crises appear, etc. (ii) He
also perceives this autonomy in its effects on the capitalist state.[5]

So if the economic is autonomous from the political, what exactly is the
role of the state in the capitalist mode of production? According to
Poulantzas, the state does not directly represent the economic interests of the
dominant class, rather it represents their long-term political interests. “The
capitalist state, characterised by hegemonic class leadership, does not
directly represent the dominant classes' economic interests, but their
political interests: it is the dominant classes' political power center, as the
organising agent of their political struggle.”[6]

This means, that if an individual capitalist goes bankrupt, the state
may not intervene directly to stave off that bankruptcy (even though they often
do). Yet if large sections of the capitalist class are threatened with losing
their wealth, as they were during the recession of 2008, the state will bail
them out since this not only effects their economic interests but the long-term
political survival of the system. Or take the example of the New Deal in the
1930s United States, in which concessions were granted to the labour movement
at the expense of certain short-term economic interests of the capitalist
class. In the long run that brought greater political stability to US
capitalism.[7]
“Thus economic concessions which further the immediate interests of the
dominated classes can simultaneously advance the political interests of the
dominant classes.”[8]

This raises the question of why does the capitalist state need to represent the
“long-term political interests” of the dominant classes? Poulantzas argues that
the state accomplishes this by using the

judicial and ideological
structures (determined in the last instance by the structure of the labour
process), which set up at their level agents of production distributed in
social classes as juridico-ideological subjects, produce the following effect
on the economic class struggle: the effect of concealing from these agents in a
particular way the fact that their relations are class relations.[9]

The greater socialisation of the capitalist economy has the effect of
bringing workers together in the labour process, but at the same time, the laws
of competition pit them against each other. We can see this during a recession
when employed workers may suffer from pay cuts or lose benefits rather than be
laid off and replaced by the multitude of unemployed who are eager for work.

Poulantzas calls this, the “isolation effect” whereby class unity is
forestalled and the working class is atomised and fragmented. The isolation
effect doesn't just effect workers, but other classes as well – such as the
capitalists. Due to the laws of competition, capitalists are fighting each
other for profit and are segmented into different blocs or fractions with their
own particular interests (finance capital, industrial capital, etc.). In the
end, class unity cannot be forged at the level of the economic. And without
some form of class unity by the dominant classes to regulate capitalism,
society is subjected to the “normal' destructive effects of the system along
with periodic economic crises that could get out of hand. Thus, to ensure the
relatively smooth functioning of capitalism, some form of cohesion and class
unity is needed. This is where the state comes in.

On the surface, the state seemingly reinforces the isolation effect by setting
up an institutional framework that conceals class relations behind the veneer
of individual citizens, which seemingly effects both the dominant and the
dominated classes alike. Why? Class unity can only forged at the level of the
political. According to Poulantzas, “the state has the particular function of
constituting the factor of cohesion between the levels of a social
formation."[10]
It is at the level of the state where “we can decipher the unity and
articulation of formation's structures.”[11]
It is at the level of the state that unity and organisation among the dominant
classes is forged (which we will discuss more below) and the dominated classes
are disorganised. Despite the relative autonomy of the economic and the
political under the CMP, state power is class power: “Class relations are
relations of power.”[12]
Since social cohesion is prevented at the economic level due to the isolation
effect and the dominance of the law of value under the CMP, falls upon the
state to regulate the system. The state not only sets up the legal and
political framework that capitalism uses to function within a particular social
formation (USA, UK, Japan, etc.), but it possesses its own economic, legislative
and repressive functions:

the state's economic or
ideological functions correspond to the political interests of the dominant
class and constitute political functions, not simply in those cases where there
is a direct and obvious relation between (a) the organisation of labour and
education and (b) the political domination of a class, but also where the
object of these functions is the maintenance of the unity of a formation,
inside which this class is the politically dominant class. It is to the extent
that the prime object of these functions is the maintenance of this unity that
they correspond to the political interests of the dominant class.[13]

The state, in representing the political interests of the dominant
classes, does not rely solely upon force, but also needs to illicit consent
from the dominated classes. For one, as we mentioned above, the state hides its
class nature by presenting itself as national-popular whereby (nearly) everyone
is classified as citizens who are equal under the law. For instance, the US constitution
grants everyone equal rights and is supposedly above classes. Despite the class
cleavages in US society, it is also “common sense” among millions that everyone
is equal in the United States.

Poulantzas and Gramsci

This leads to the question of how the dominant class is able to achieve
and maintain hegemony. Before elaborating on this, it is necessary to briefly discuss
what is “hegemony”. The term hegemony is mainly associated with the work of the
Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, who uses it in a number of ways, only one of
which concerns us here.[14]

Gramsci was interested in the ways that the bourgeoisie preserved its
rule (which is a continual and never finished process) by coercion and consent.
According to Gramsci, while bourgeois rule may ultimately be based on force, it
does not rely solely upon it. For the bourgeoisie to maintain its hegemony, it
cannot always use the stick, but has to use the carrot as well. “The 'normal'
exercise of hegemony on the now classical terrain of the parliamentary regime
is characterised by the combination of force and consent, which balance each
other reciprocally, without force predominating excessively over consent.”[15]

Although Gramsci never denies that the state ultimately rests upon armed force,
he was perhaps the first Marxist theorist to emphasise the role that consent
plays in allowing the bourgeoisie to maintain its hegemony. This is why Gramsci
spends so much time dealing with the role of ideology and culture in bourgeois
society and how that is transmitted through the various organs of civil
society. Bourgeois ideology is promoted and accepted by the masses; so that
their subordinate status and the over-all system is not in question (capitalism
thus becomes “commonsense” to people).

However, Gramsci does not believe that the dominant ideology reigns
supreme, but rather it can be challenged and itself be a site for revolutionary
struggle.[16]
Along with the strictly political level (the state), the ruling class also
utilises the organs of civil society to maintain its rule. By civil society,
Gramsci is referring to the “ensemble of organisms that are commonly called
private”[17]
such as political parties, trade unions, the media, churches, schools and other
voluntary associations. These organs of civil society are the vehicles through
which the capitalist class fosters consent due to the “spontaneous"
consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction
imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group; this consent is
"historically" caused by the prestige (and consequent confidence)
which the dominant group enjoys because of its position and function in the
world of production.”[18]

In other words, the bourgeoisie, being the ruling class that controls
the state and the means of production, is able to disseminate its ideas and
ideology throughout society.

Thus, Poulantzas is interested in hegemony in regards to how “the politically
practices of the dominant class of a capitalist formation, and not to its
state, is used in two senses.” The first is how the political interests of the
ruling class are “constituted, as representatives of the “general interest” of
the body politic, i.e. the people/nation which is based on the effect of
isolation from the economic.”[19]

We can see in the United States how the interests of the ruling class
are made to appear as the “general interests of society”. Congressional representatives
and the president speak and act as if the policies they enact, in say, cutting
taxes or bailing out the wealthy during a recession, are for the good of
“America” since we all “must make shared sacrifices” to ensure that the economy
recovers.

Since the state is legitimised by popular sovereignty where all are
equal before the law, supposedly its policies are above classes. Furthermore,
consensual support for these policies is obtained from the population by way of
the organs of civil society such as television such as Fox News, churches,
political parties and trade unions, who propagate the dominant ideology.

Yet behind the carrot of consent, there is the stick of coercion. When
protesters take to the street to protest the disadvantages and injustices
inflicted by the “1%” they are met with brutal police violence.

Poulantzas is also interested in how the ruling class maintains hegemony by
establishing its own unity through a power bloc. According to Poulantzas,

the concept of hegemony is
also used in another sense, which is not actually pointed out by Gramsci. The
capitalist state and the specific characteristics of the class struggle in a
capitalist social formation make it possible for a “power bloc”, composed of
several politically dominant classes or fractions to function. Amongst these
dominant classes and fractions one of them holds a particular dominant role,
which can be characterised as a hegemonic role. In this second sense, the
concept of hegemony encompasses the particular domination of one of the
dominant classes or fractions in a capitalist social formation.[20]

The need for the power bloc comes about due to the isolation effect,
since the bourgeoisie is divided into different blocs and unable to forge unity
among themselves. For example, take the different fractions in the dominant
classes of the United States before the Civil War: the industrial bourgeoisie,
financiers, merchants, plantation owners, etc. These fractions were internally
divided by the plantation owners' defence of slavery (and economic ties with
Britain) which stood diametrically opposed to the advance of capitalist social
relations championed by the industrialists. During the Civil War, the
industrial bourgeoisie (through the medium of the Republican Party) in the
United States was able to establish hegemony by presenting their mission to
restore the Union and abolish slavery as the general interests of the nation.
The industrial bourgeoisie gained hegemony over the dominated classes, created
a new power bloc with themselves in charge – subordinating other sections of
the bourgeoisie and the old plantation class to their leadership, in order to
develop capitalism and create a unified internal market within the United
States.

Naturally, the exact make-up of the power bloc differs from state to state
(whether in France, Japan, Saudi Arabia or the USA). And it is not only
fractions of the dominant classes who are part of the power bloc, but the petty
bourgeoisie and sections of the labour aristocracy.

To take the case of the labour aristocracy: following World War II,
social-democratic parties in Europe entered governments and established welfare
states that provided security for the working class. While capitalist social
relations were not abolished in Europe, the integration of social democracy
into the power bloc helped the ruling class to maintain hegemony.

Similarly, there were shifts in the power bloc in Europe with the onset
of neoliberalism as the gains of labour were demolished and as power was
reconstituted to the benefit of financial capital. Thus even within the power
bloc there are still contradictory elements with their own divergent interests.

In order to unify the power bloc, the state must take an active role to ensure
that such unity is maintained and that internal contradictions of the different
fractions do not threaten the rule of the power bloc and the overall cohesion
of the system.

For example, the Weimar Republic in Germany was threatened during the
Great Depression with the breakdown of its ruling power bloc which lost popular
support in the midst of an economic calamity, opening the door to a possible
revolutionary challenge from the Communist Party. The Social Democrat Party
(SPD) had been willing to forgo any attempt at socialism in order to integrate
the working class into Weimar's democratic capitalism, in return for various
social welfare provisions. The dominant factions of the bourgeoisie accepted
this compromise in order to protect their interests and to use the SPD to
maintain control over the working class.

However, with the outbreak of the Depression, the ruling power bloc in the
Weimar Republic needed to restore profitability and labour discipline, but its
traditional parties had lost nearly all the popular support needed to carry out
the required policies. Furthermore, the ruling class was divided, with
industrial and financial sectors opposed to the Junkers or landed property
owners; manufacturing sectors opposed heavy industry; mid-level employers
wanted to negotiate a compromise with the working class and large employers
were desirous of crushing the working class and gaining total power.
Ultimately, the power bloc was reconstituted by the state under the control of
the Nazis, who possessed a substantial popular base. The Nazi state proceeded
to crush the far left and labour movement, re-establish profitability for the
bourgeoisie and to establish their own dominance within the power bloc.[21]

Ultimately, due to the divergent interests within the power bloc, one class or
fraction needs to be in charge of the state to assume political and strategic
responsibility:

The power bloc can in the
end only operate under the hegemony and leadership of the component that
cements it together in the face of the class enemy. The strategic organisation
of the State destines it to function under the hegemony of a class or fraction
located within it. At the same time, the privileged position of this class or
fraction is a constitutive element of its hegemony within the constellation of
the relationship of forces.[22]

The capitalist state is able to forge a power bloc, establish hegemony
over the dominated class (and disorganise them), and secure the long-term
political interests of the dominant classes due to its relative autonomy from
the economic level. When using the terms “relative autonomy” we should be
careful to note that both terms are equally important. Perhaps the best analogy
to explain the "relative autonomy" of the state is that of a tether
for a dog. The tether can be either long or short, giving the dog room for
maneuver, but ultimately it is firmly implanted in the ground. The same is true
of the state. The state is a class state, repressing the dominated classes,
maintaining social control and representing the interests of the dominant
classes as a whole. However, the state needs its own room to move and cannot be
tied to the momentary passions or the interests of a small group of
capitalists. If it is to rule for the interests of the ruling class as a whole,
then it has to be able to maneuver against any group or individual capitalists
that get out of line (e.g. Richard Nixon) and thereby threaten its long-term
interests.

None of this denies that the state is still a repressive apparatus, but
it does say that the state is not a simple reflection of the economic base and
needs its own room to moveif it is to
successfully fulfill its function.

As Bob Jessop argues:

Only when the state has a certain autonomy from
all fractions can it act against the long-term economic interests of one or
other fraction of the dominant class and/or arrange compromises vis-à-vis the
dominated classes. Without such economic sacrifices and compromises, however,
it would not be possible to secure the political class interests of the power
bloc... Relative autonomy often depends on support from the dominated classes.[23]

Yet, we should not forget that while the state is relatively autonomous and the
fractions of the ruling class contain their own particular interests and
strategies (some may offer concessions), they all remain the enemy. No matter
which one of them is power, it is their goal to maintain the overall system of
exploitation. While there can be fissures in the state apparatus, Jessop says
“that the state personnel can sometimes become an independent social force and
disrupt the smooth operation of hegemonic class leadership. Nonetheless, even
when acting as an authentic social force, the bureaucracy more often supports
an exceptional form of the capitalist state rather than a transition to
socialism.”[24]

When the dominant classes are threatened with revolutionary upheaval, if they
are not overthrown, then the different fractions will come together (perhaps
with a different fraction playing the leading role) to either crush or buy off
any challenges. In Political Power and Social Classes, Poulantzas does
not believe that there is a parliamentary road to socialism: "In fact, as
far as the conquest of parliament by the dominated classes is concerned, class
domination has its disposal a whole gamut of defences to protect itself from
such misadventures."[25]

He argues that the relative autonomous nature of the state does not mean
that it is a neutral instrument which can just be seised by the working class:

This relative autonomy has
nothing to do with a state in transition or with a state with an equilibrium of
forces. In other words, it does not call into question the profound relations
between the contemporary state and the hegemonic fraction of the monopolies: on
the contrary, it presupposes them...The effect of constant isolation presented
by the working class's economic struggle necessitates the political organisation
of this class into an autonomous party which will realize this unity. But the
state's function is to maintain this isolation (which is its own effect) by
presenting itself as the representative of the political unity of the
people-nation: this contributes to its relative autonomy vis-a-vis the dominant
classes....In other words, this autonomy vis-a-vis the politically dominant
classes, inscribed in the institutional play of the capitalist state, neither
authorizes the dominant classes effectively to participate in political power
nor cedes 'parcels' of institutionalised power to them. State power is not a
machine or an instrument, a simple object coveted by the various classes; nor
is it divided into parts which, if not in the hands of some, must automatically
be in the hands of others: rather it is an ensemble of structures.[26]

Ultimately, it is the task of communists to smash the state, not to seize it.
For whatever the contradictions among the dominant class, it will come together
to smash the dominated classes from ever taking power peacefully. To put a
twist on Mao's famous saying:

Within the exploiting
classes, the contradictions among the exploiters are non-antagonistic, while
those between the exploited and the exploiting classes have a non-antagonistic
as well as an antagonistic aspect.

This means that in advanced capitalist countries like the USA, there is
no section of the power bloc that socialists and communists can ally with.
Since whatever may be the differences in policy and strategy between say the
Democrat or the Republican parties or the financial and industrial sections of
the ruling class, they remain united against us and in favour of capitalist
rule. Now these sections of the ruling class do need to build hegemony, so they
draw upon “popular” movements such as the Tea Party or the Bernie Sanders
campaign, giving them broader appeal than they would otherwise possess.

In the case of the Sanders' campaign, his “socialist” credentials seem to
promise reform concessions from above to draw those who might otherwise seek an
anti-system alternative into the Democratic Party. The Sanders' campaign may
have the appearance of independence, but that is all part of how hegemony is
established. Yet hegemony is precisely about iliciting voluntarily consent from
those it seeks to dominate. In the end, if Sanders were to win, he would simply
give greater cohesion to the power bloc by placating those from below.

Ultimately, our goal is not to ally with one or another section of the
power bloc since they are our enemies - but to overthrow them all by
forming our own counter-hegemonic revolutionary alliance of the dominated
classes.

Althusserian framework

Poulantzas' Political Power and Social Classes, despite its extremely
difficult Althusserian language (a perspective he subsequently abandoned),
managed to develop a regional theory of the contemporary capitalist state that
had been neglected by “orthodox” Marxists who were more interested in repeating
old stale formulas. The work shows a profound loyalty to revolutionary Leninism
(influenced by Maoism) in contrast to theorists in both the Moscow-line Communist
parties and social democracy.

However, the Althusserian framework that Poulantzas adapted presents a number
of problems for him. According to Bob Jessop, while Poulantzas says that the
political, economic and ideological levels of a mode of production are
relatively autonomous, “it is quite another thing to claim that each region can
be analysed entirely in its own terms. Poulantzas does not really advance this
claim and actually insists on the ultimately determining role of the economic.
But, in concentrating on a distinct regional political theory and neglecting
the regional economic theory and the particular theory of the CMP as a whole,
Poulantzas certainly runs the risk of ignoring the economic and ideological
determinants of politics.”[27]

And in ignoring the ideological and economic levels for a focus on the political,
Poulantzas ends up making that level the dominant force in a mode of production
(despite his claims to the contrary):

in the global role of the
state, the dominance of its economic function indicates that, as a general
rule, the dominant role in the articulation of a formation's instances reverts
to the political; and this is so not simply in the strict sense of the state's
direct function in the strictly political class struggle, but rather in the
sense indicated here. In this case, the dominance of the state's economic
function over its other functions is coupled with its dominant role, in that
its function of being the cohesive factor necessitates its specific
intervention in that instance which maintains the determinant role of a
formation, namely, the economic.[28]

According to Ellen Meiksins Wood, in a critique of Poulantzas, this
means that he is arguing that because the relations of exploitation lie in the
“economic” and not the “political”, “he is in effect arguing that the relations
of exploitation (though no doubt 'determinant in the last instance') no longer
'reign supreme'.”[29]
Poulantzas tends to focus on the political to the detriment of other levels of
a mode of production and thus unable to adequately explain the linkages between
these different levels.[30]

III. Social classes

By the time Poulantzas completed Classes in Contemporary Capitalism in 1974,
he was moving away from structuralist Marxism (although such themes still
appear in this work) and was engaged with debating (from the left) the Communist
Party of France's theories and strategy for an anti-monopoly alliance.[31]
In comparison to Political Power and Social Classes, economic themes are
much more prominent in this work. Poulantzas is also concerned with developing
a revolutionary strategy for imperialist countries, which means developing the
necessary class alliances. However, Poulantzas believes that socialist strategy
has been deficient in understanding the class structure of contemporary
capitalism.

In this section, we will be concerned with three questions: (1) what
criteria does Poulantzas use to determine social classes? (2) What are the
strategic and political implications of Poulantzas' definition of social class,
particularly in regard to the petty bourgeoisie and the working class? (3) What
are some problems with Poulantzas' understanding of class?

Poulantzas follows his earlier methodological approach by stating that
the capitalist mode of production has three distinct layers: the political,
economic and the ideological. While Poulantzas argues that social classes are
characterised mainly by their place in the production process, but not this is
not sufficient to fully define them. Rather, Poulantzas argues that “the
economic does indeed have the determinant role in a mode of production or a
social formation; but the political and the ideological (the superstructure)
also have a very important role.”[32]
Thus, while the economic is primary, class has to be defined at all three
levels.

By economic, Poulantzas identifies it as a space determined by two things: “the
process of production, and the place of the agents, their distribution into
social classes, is determined by the relations of production.”[33]
The production process primarily concerns the labour process, which is a
historically determined relation. The labour process, in a class divided
society, encompass a double relation of humanity to nature in terms of
production. This double relation includes the relation “between the agents of
production and the object and means of labour (the productive forces); second,
and through this, relations between men and other men, class relations.”[34]
These relations involve two aspects: one being ownership, which is the real
power of the bourgeoisie to use economic resources and dispose of their products.
Secondly, possession which is the ability to operate the means of production
(or the labour process). It is chiefly in the realm of economic exploitation,
that surplus labour is appropriated from the direct producers and that class is
determined.

Yet Poulantzas hastens to add that while “every worker is a wage-earner, every
wage-earner is certainly not a worker, for not every wage-earner is engaged in
productive labor.”[35]
Thus, it is not the wage relation that determines a worker, but whether that person
is engaged in productive labour. By productive labour, Poulantzas means labour
that gives rise to the dominant mode of production and its corresponding
relations of exploitation and “that which directly produces surplus-value.”[36]
This has profound implications for Poulantzas' definition of class, the
formulation of revolutionary strategy and alliances (which we will return to),
since those deemed “unproductive labourers” in banking, insurance, the service
industry, etc are not considered part of the working class.[37]

Poulantzas also introduces the important distinct between class determination
and class position. Class determination “designates certain objective places
occupied by the social agents in the social division of labour: places which
are independent of the will of these agents.”[38]
By contrast, class position is more subjective and can involve a class taking
the position that coincides with that of another class. For example, workers
who support the parties of the ruling class: Republican or Democratic
(Poulantzas uses the example of the labour aristocracy). However, it is
possible for members of other classes to adopt the standpoint of the working
class such as intellectuals or petty bourgeoisie who support socialism and
communism. This distinction will have important bearing on the development of
class alliances by the proletariat since it means other classes can adopt a
working-class position.

This brings us to the question of the petty bourgeoisie, where Poulantzas makes
the bold claim that “the definition of the class nature of the petty
bourgeoisie is the focal point of the Marxist theory of social classes.”[39]
Poulantzas says that one cannot rely on the relationship of the petty
bourgeoisie to the relations of production or economic criteria, but that “it
is absolutely indispensable to refer to ideological and political
relations."[40]

When discussing the petty bourgeoisie, Poulantzas distinguishes between the
“old” and the “new” petty bourgeoisie. The “old” or traditional petty
bourgeoisie are small property owners, artisans, small traders, etc who are
both owners and workers. The “new” petty bourgeoisie are mental labourers,
supervisors and white-collar workers as opposed to manual workers. However,
based on the understanding that only those performing productive labour under
capitalism count as members of the working class, Poulantzas argues, that the
new petty-bourgeoisie consists of “non-productive wage-earning workers
[and]civil servants employed by the state and its various apparatuses.”[41]

Poulantzas insists that the old and new bourgeoisie both belong to the same
class, even though the former “does not belong to the capitalist mode of
production, but to the simple commodity form which was historically the form of
transition from the feudal to the capitalist mode”, while the latter, developed
with modern capitalism.[42]

Whereas the traditional petty bourgeoisie is not fundamental to the CMP, but is
polarised between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, who are the main
antagonistic classes. On the other hand, the new bourgeoisie is polarised
ideologically between the class positions of the proletariat and the
bourgeoisie. Ideologically, the petty-bourgeoisie has three traits: status-quo
anti-capitalism , belief in upward mobility and in the neutrality of the state.[43]
Politically, the petty bourgeoisie can have no class position of its own since
it is not a fundamental class to capitalism.

According to his own definition of class, Poulantzas believes that since the
working class formed only a minority in contemporary capitalism, it was
imperative for them to form a class alliance with both old and new sections of
the petty bourgeoisie. While Poulantzas did not argue that the
petty-bourgeoisie were workers, he did say that they were part of the people
and the popular masses. It was important for socialist strategy that the
interests of the workers and the petty-bourgeoisie not be confused or conflated
since “recognition of their class membership, which differentiates them from
the working class, is nevertheless essential in order to establish a correct
basis for the popular alliance, under the leadership and hegemony of the
working class.”[44]

The working class needed to be able to articulate its own interests and not
confuse them with other classes, but they had to take seriously the
contradictions that would arise with other forces in order to create a durable
alliance. In contrast, the PCF in conflating the interests of the petty
bourgeoisie with thoseof the working class damaged the long term interests of
the latter. When different class interests are confused, the working class
winds up capitulating to the interests of alien class forces that possess
social democratic and reformist illusions.

According to Ellen Wood, while Poulantzas was arguing to the left of the PCF's
anti-monopoly strategy, he still remains largely within the popular front and
reformist foundation of the party. Far from offering an alternative, Poulantzas
did not want “to undermine Communist strategy but to set it on a sounder
foundation.”[45]
Wood accuses Poulantzas of reformulating Marxist theory and practice in a
rightward direction by shifting the “principal opposition from the class
relations between labour and capital to the political relations between the
'people' and a dominant force or power bloc organised by the state.”[46]
And the criticisms are not unfounded, since Poulantzas was arguing for
concessions to other class forces in the interests of developing an
anti-monopoly alliance.

Part of the weakness of Poulantzas' theoretical and strategic perspective can
be found in his understanding of class. According to his own criteria,
Poulantzas said that the economic was primary, but when stating that the old
and new petty bourgeoisie are part of the same class, even though both have
different places in the relations of production, they are united by ideology.
In running away from economistic definitions of class, Poulantzas ended up
running away from economics and putting the emphasis on politics and ideas.

Furthermore, Poulantzas' separation of productive and unproductive labour is
based on a misunderstanding of Marx. Poulantzas argues that Marx, in
distinguishing productive and unproductive labourers, excludes the latter from
the ranks of the working class. This winds up artificially reducing the working
class to a minority of the population even in the most advanced capitalist
societies such as the United States. Poulantzas also overstates the difference
between productive and non-productive labour as criteria for determining who is
a proletarian and petty bourgeoisie. For the capitalist, it doesn't matter
whether someone is a steel worker, a janitor or a technician, rather what
matters according to the US Marxist Harry Braverman

is not the determinate form
of the labour, but whether it has been drawn into the network of capitalist
social relations, whether the worker who carries it on has been transformed
into a wage-worker, and whether the labour of the worker has been transformed
into productive labour-that is, labour which produces a profit for capital....Labour
which is put to work in the production of goods is not thereby sharply divided
from labour applied to the production of services, since both are forms of
production of commodities, and of production on a capitalist basis, the object
of which is the production not only of value-in-exchanve but of surplus value
for the capitalist. The variety of determinate forms of labour may affect the
consciousness, cohesiveness or economic and political activity of the working
class, but they do not effect its existence as a class. The various forms of labour
which produce commodities for the capitalist are all to be counted as
productive labour. The worker who builds an office building and the worker who
cleans it every night alike produce value and surplus value. Because they are
productive for the capitalist, the capitalist allows them to work and produce;
insofar as such workers are productive, society lives at their expense.[47]

In other words, surplus value is not just extracted from manual workers
in mining, but from service workers in call centers or grocery stores, since
all of them contribute to the accumulation of profit by the capitalists.
Whatever differences may exist between a boilermaker and a cashier, they all
belong to the same class. Thus when we abandon Poulantzas' conception of the
petty bourgeoisie as non-productive labourers, we can see the working class is
far larger in advanced capitalist societies than he was willing to allow.

Lastly, objection can be made to Poulantzas' definition of class for including
three levels: the economic, political and the ideological (with the first being
determinant). Rather, it is only the economic that determines the objective
existence of a class. At the time Poulantzas was writing, a great deal of
Marxist historical writing such as E.P. Thompson, had looked upon class as a
subjective “making” with its own political perspectives and culture. Instead
class should be looked upon primarily as an objective category defined by the
social relations of exploitation that extract surplus labour from the immediate
producers. And while the class struggle can have a subjective factor, this is
not necessarily so and the development of collective unity or class
consciousness may or may not emerge. Yet even without a sense of collective
identity, resistance by the dominated classes still occurs, since that is still
produced by the very nature of exploitation. Otherwise, if we are to look at
class and class struggles which are defined by political or ideological
factors, we would have to discount most of the class struggles which have
occurred throughout history.[48]

IV. The transition to socialism

Poulantzas' last major work, State, Power and Socialism (SPS),
was completed in 1978, by which time he had moved politically to the left edge
of Eurocommunism. Poulantzas had shed Leninist notions of smashing the state
and establishing a regime of dual power. In summing up the lessons from the
Portuguese Revolution of 1974-5, Poulantzas explicitly declared that the
existing state apparatus “must however be able to continue to function as an
operational unity. Not only can there be no question of 'smashing' it at this
stage, but its 'democratisation' must not involve its dismantling.”[49]

Instead, he argued that it was imperative for the left to abandon the view that
the state was “a monolithic bloc without cracks of any kind.”[50]
Therefore, Poulantzas argued that a path to democratic socialism had to
recognise that the class struggle does not just take place external to the
state, but within it as well: “For state power to be taken, a mass struggle
must have unfolded in such a way as to modify the relationship of forces within
the state apparatuses, themselves the strategic site of political struggle.”[51]

Poulantzas also said that his proposed strategy was different from those of
reformist social democracy because it was not premised on winning “successive
reforms in an unbroken chain, to conquer the state machinery piece by piece, or
simply to occupy the positions of government. It denotes nothing other than a
stage of real breaks, the climax of which - and there has to be one - is
reached when the relationship of forces on the strategic terrain of the state
swings over to the side of the popular masses.”[52]
Therefore, Poulantzas distinguished himself not only from Leninism, but from
reformism, arguing for struggle both inside and outside of the state apparatus.

The perspectives elaborated by Poulantzas' last writings are far from
academic or just confined to theory. Significant political currents and individuals
within the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA), who currently hold
governmental office in Greece, take their inspiration from Poulantzas. SYRIZA
faces the challenges, problems and opportunities of carrying out not only an
anti-austerity program, but potentially more radical social changes in Greece.
At the same time, SYRIZA has to deal with resistance from their own native
bourgeoisie and the Troika composed of the European Commission (EC), European
Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) who remain determine
to cripple the country.

According to Stathis Kouvelakis, a member of the Central Committee of SYRIZA
and a leading member of the Left Platform, both Gramsci (with his notion of
organic crisis and war of position) and Poulantzas have been important for
understanding the nature of the crisis in Greece. In regards to Poulantzas,
Kouvelakis says that his thinking has helped SYRIZA to conceive of a strategy
of “seising power by elections, but combining that with social mobilisations and
breaking with the notion of a dual power as an insurrectionary attack on the
state from the outside — the state has to seised from the inside and from the
outside, from above and from below.”[53]
According to Kouvelakis' reading of Poulantzas SYRIZA also needs to “understand
specifically the risks of Syriza’s evolution as a party form and more
particularly the need to avoid the “state-isation” of Syriza. The risk of this
type of strategy is that, before reaching power, or immediately after reaching
power, you have already been absorbed by the state.”[54]
If SYRIZA doesn't understand those risks and neglects to purse a strategy of
'real breaks,' they will wind up as just another reformist party within the
existing state.

So with all that in mind, we will ask ourselves the following questions: (1)
how did Poulantzas' theory of the state change to allow him to say that it was
traversed by internal contradictions? (2) Based on this, what strategy does
Poulantzas propose for socialists to employ? (3) What pitfalls and problems
confront his proposed strategy?

Although State, Power and Socialism continues many of the arguments and
themes found in his earlier work, Poulantzas moves beyond his earlier
Althusserianism. Now, in place of stressing the relative autonomy of the state
in regards to the economic level, he states that the economy has never “formed
a hermetically sealed level, capable of self-reproduction and possessing its
own 'laws' of internal functioning. The political field of the State (as well
as the sphere of ideology) has always, in different forms, been present in the
constitution and reproduction of the relations of production.”[55]

Yet the role of the state in relation to the economy has changed as
capitalism developed. In the shift from competitive to monopoly capitalism, the
state's “strictly economic functions were subordinated, though not reduced,
especially, to its repressive and ideological functions.”[56]

The onset of crises in the 1970s that saw European welfare states suffer
from declining profitability and sharpening class struggles, meant that the
state needed to manage these contradictions by increasing its economic
functions. This led to the development of neoliberalism that slashed the social
safety net and increased the power of finance, which was facilitated by the state.
According to Poulantzas, “the dominant place of economic functions within the
state has given rise to new forms of specialisation in certain state bodies
charged with carrying out these functions. Unless we break with the analogical
image according to which the state apparatuses are divided into watertight
fields, we cannot grasp the reorganisation, extension and consolidation of the
state economic apparatus as the restructuring principle of state space.”[57]
In other words, the Althusserian paradigm of a regional theory with its
separate levels needed to be abandoned by looking at the state in the current
phase of capitalism.

In place of the regional theory, Poulantzas now posited that the state was a
social relation: “the (capitalist) State should not be regarded as an intrinsic
entity: like 'capital,' it is rather a relationship of forces, or more
precisely the material condensation of such a relationship among classes and
class fractions, such as expressed within the State in a necessarily specific
form.”[58]
The state is, like capital, is a social relation where state power is a “form-determined
condensation of the changing balance of forces in political and
politically-relevant struggle.”[59]
The various struggles between classes and fractions are arbitrated by the state
apparatus, which does not have a fixed character, but is itself the product of
struggles. The state ensures the political unity of the ruling class through
all of its apparatuses (not just the repressive ones and political parties).
And this is accomplished since the state possesses relative autonomy.

The state constitutes the political unity of the dominant classes, thereby
establishing their dominance. Moreover, the fundamental role of organisation
does not involve just one apparatus or branch of the State (political parties),
but concerns, in varying degrees and manners, the totality of its apparatuses -
including pre-eminently repressive ones such as the military police.

Further, “The state apparatuses consecrate and reproduce hegemony by bringing
the power bloc and certain dominated classes into a (variable) game of
provisional compromises. The state apparatuses organise-unify the power bloc by
permanently disorganising-dividing the dominated classes, polarising them
towards the power bloc, and short-circuiting their own political organisations.”[60]

However, Poulantzas does not believe that the balance of class and
political forces are fixed, rather it is the result of past struggles that can
be modified due to changes in the power bloc and/or the dominant classes. This
leads Poulantzas to modify his earlier understanding of the distinction between
the repressive and ideological state apparatuses found in Althusserian theory,
by stating that “the basic error of this conception was the fact that it
restricted the State to the exercise of repression and reproduction of the
dominant ideology. In reality, there are a number of state apparatuses that
pre-eminently fulfill functions other than repression and reproduction of the
dominant ideology.”[61]

The state needs to produce a material substratum of mass consent in
order to ensure hegemony, such as by creating a social safety net, alleviating
unemployment and providing education.

Poulantzas goes further and theorises the state as “a strategic field and
process power networks, which both articulate and exhibit and displacements.”[62]

In looking at the strategic field, British Marxist Richard Seymour
states that Poulantzas views the strategic field quite broadly. For instance,
while institutions such as hospitals and asylums that are normally not included
within the strategic field of the state state, Poulantzas includes them along
with all sorts of formally private institutions such as paramilitaries or
charities.[63]

In conceptualising the state as a social relation, itself the product of past
struggles, this means that Poulantzas views the state not as a single
undifferentiated bloc, but itself traversed by class struggle. He believed that
it was possible for the dominated classes to establish beach-heads or influence
within the state apparatus. In terms of political strategy, Poulantzas argues
that the left and social movements should not ignore state power, but rather,

In the democratic road to
socialism, the long process of taking power essentially consists in the
spreading, development, reinforcement, coordination and direction of those
diffuse centres of resistance which the masses always possess within the state
networks, in such a way that they become the real centres of power on the
strategic terrain of the state.[64]

It would be the task of popular movements that have established
beach-heads to intensify the existing contradictions inside the state, while at
the same time, mobilising the masses outside of the state to develop new forms
of self-government in order to challenge the existing state in order to begin
the transition to socialism.

While Poulantzas, rejects a parliamentary road to socialism (to be found
among right Eurocommunists or social democrats) he also eschews an
insurrectionist strategy.

A number of objections can be raised to Poulantzas' strategy for socialist
transition of establishing beach-heads within the state and intensifying their
contradictions alongside popular struggles on the outside. At this point,
Poulantzas had abandoned the theory of the leading role of a communist party,
but provided no adequate substitute.

Furthermore, the then-Trotskyist Henri Weber notes that Poulantzas' own
work provides a number of number of objections to his strategy. For one, the
dominated classes are unlikely to hold more than peripheral positions within
the state. The major organs of repressive power -- such as the courts, army and
the police will be in the hands of the ruling class and remain committed to the
defence of the existing order.

Second, since the state is a strategic field, power can be shifted
within it. For instance, in Chile when Allende and a socialist government was
elected, the old order took steps to ensure that radical measures could not be
passed through parliament.

Third, if the balance of power within the state goes against the ruling
class, they will fight it by any means necessary (see the example of Chile in
1973).

Fourth, the majority of the state apparatus remain committed to
maintaining the existing system. And lastly, owing to the growth of
authoritarianism, all of these tendencies have been accentuated and not
diminished.[65]

Thus, Poulantzas' strategy does not appear to be promising and in fact
the objections raised point toward the necessity of both a communist party and
a dictatorship of the proletariat.

Poulantzas explicitly rejected the need to smash the state, stating that there
will not be a single rupture, but rather a long transitional process that will
pass through the existing state.[66]
For him, this meant abandoning the Marxist idea of a dictatorship of the
proletariat and its replacement by a state modelled on the Paris Commune. What
Poulantzas argues for instead is to democratise the institutions of
representative democracy in order to ensure and extend the political freedoms
and institutions of representative democracy (both of which were the result of
popular struggle).[67]

Poulantzas rejects reliance on organs of direct democracy such as
Soviets, saying,

as far as I know, it's
never worked. Direct democracy, by which I mean direct democracy in the soviet
sense only, has always and everywhere been accompanied by the suppression of
the plurality of parties and then the suppression of political and formal
liberties. Now, to say that that's merely Stalinism seems to me to be going a
bit far.[68]

Beyond what Poulantzas views as the undemocratic nature of dual power
and direct democracy, he also believes that such a Leninist strategy is
unrealistic: the existing state would not allow the creation of a
counter-power.[69]

Ultimately, Poulantzas believes that the Leninist theory of revolution, dual
power and soviet power was based on four misconceptions: 1. the struggle is “a
frontal struggle of manoeuvre or encirclement, taking place outside the
fortress-state and principally aiming at the creation of a situation of dual
power.” Second, it is a misreading of means and strategy that reduced the
revolution to the seizure of power, that “clearly lacks the strategic vision of
a process of transition to socialism -- that is, of a long stage during which
the masses will act to conquer power and transform the state apparatuses.”
Third, Leninism can't conceive of how to intervene in the current state. Last,
Leninism leaves unresolved the question of how to transform the state apparatus
during the transition to socialism.[70]

For Poulantzas, who was basing himself on Rosa Luxemburg's critical 1918
essay on the Russian Revolution, the Bolshevik conception of revolution led to
the denial of political freedom, the suppression of the masses and the birth of
Stalinist statism.

There are a number of objections that can be made to Poulantzas' understanding
of Lenin and Bolshevik strategy, a few of which will be mentioned here. For
one, Poulantzas draws a rather straight line between the October Revolution and
the worst crimes that occurred under Stalin. He seems to assume that the abuses
of Stalin were contained in the original Bolshevik conception of power, but
forgets that the Russian Revolution faced economic breakdown, counterrevolution,
invasion, civil war and a number of contingent factors that they had to contend
with.

However, just because the USSR underwent that particular development,
does not mean all similar attempts will meet the same fate. Nor is it explained
how representative democracy could have changed the outcome of the Bolshevik
Revolution. Furthermore, Poulantzas condemns the Bolshevik decision to abolish
the Constituent Assembly in 1918 as an undemocratic act. Yet Poulantzas never
asks how representative that assembly was (or how it served as the rallying cry
of every counterrevolutionary force in Russia) and that it refused to recognise
Soviet Power.

In comparison to the purely formal democracy which could, arguably be
said to exist in the Constituent Assembly, we can say that Soviet power greatly
expanded the rights of the vast majority in Russia by overthrowing the old
order and striving to put in place a new society. Last, Poulantzas makes the
error of posing a sharp dichotomy between direct and representative democracy,
which in fact politics involves elements that are both direct and
representational.

Poulantzas also extended his criticism of Lenin to Gramsci, stating that
despite the latter's insights, his ideas such as the war of position were
“essentially conceived as the application of Lenin's model/strategy to the
'different concrete conditions' of the West.”[71]
According to Poulantzas, Gramsci conceives of the war of position as
surrounding “the strong castle of the state from outside with the structures of
popular power. But in the end it's always the same story. It's a strong castle,
right? So either you launch an assault on it -- war of movement; or you besiege
it -- war of position. In any case, there is no conception in Gramsci's work
that a real revolutionary rupture, linked to an internal struggle, can occur at
this or that point of the state apparatus.”[72]

Peter Thomas has argued that Poulantzas's critique of Gramsci was based
on a mistaken view of the state and the war of position. According to Thomas,
Poulantzas argued that Gramsci had “remained a prisoner to the topographical
metaphors of the Leninist tradition”[73]
with dual power, and their separation between the state and civil society. Yet
Poulantzas misunderstands Gramsci's theory of the state and hegemony by
believing that he separates the state and civil society.

Gramsci did not view the relation of the state and civil society in advanced
capitalist societies of the west as the same as Russia. Rather, Gramsci argued:

In Russia the State was
everything, civil society was primordial and gelatinous; in the West, there was
a proper relation between State and civil society, and when the State trembled
a sturdy structure of civil society was at once revealed. The State was only an
outer ditch, behind which there stood a powerful system of fortresses and
earthworks: more or less numerous from one State to the next, it goes without
saying-but this precisely necessitated an accurate reconnaissance of each
individual country.[74]

By contrast, Thomas says that Gramsci believed that in the West, both
the state and civil society were interrelated and unified parts of an “integral
state”. According to Thomas, what emerges from Gramsci's theory of the integral
state is

a new “consensual”
political practice distinct from mere coercion (a dominant means of previous
ruling classes) on this new terrain of civil society; but, like civil society,
integrally linked to the state, hegemony’s full meaning only becomes apparent
when it is related to its dialectical distinction of coercion. Hegemony in
civil society functions as the social basis of the dominant class’s political
power in the state apparatus, which in turn reinforces its initiatives in civil
society. The integral state, understood in this broader sense, is the process
of the condensation and transformation of these class relations into
institutional form.[75]

While coercion and consent are separate with different functions, they
operate as part of a single integrated whole. Therefore, Poulantzas' criticism
that for Gramsci the class struggle takes place outside of the state is false
when read in light of the theory of the “integral state.”

For Gramsci, a strategy of dual power is not external to the state, but
rather builds hegemony throughout civil society in order to launch a war of
maneuver within the state. Thomas sums up Gramsci's strategy as follows:

The path to political power
for the proletariat would involve, in the first instance, modifying the
relation of forces within the integral state, dislocating the mutual
reinforcement of coercion and consent exploited by the bourgeoisie in order to
further its own class domination…The state apparatuses of the bourgeoisie could
be neutralised only when the proletariat had deprived it of its ‘social basis’
through the elaboration of an alternative hegemonic project. Gramsci conceived
this project in concrete terms, as “hegemonic apparatuses”... and by means of
which a class and its allies could engage its opponent in a struggle for
political power, or leadership over the society as a whole. Such a movement
would eventually lead to moment in which these forces would have to
institutionalize themselves in power in the state apparatus ... in a specific
and distinctive way.[76]

Despite the difference that separates Gramsci and Poulantzas in terms of
Leninism and the dictatorship of the proletariat, when it comes to their
understanding of the war of position, the creation of a counter-hegemonic
socialist project, and a relational theory of the state, both actually converge
a great deal.

Rather than use Poulantzas' rejection of a vanguard party, the dictatorship of
the proletariat and the strong objections to his strategy of a transition to
simply dismiss his ideas as reformist or centrist, let us say instead say: he
asked the right questions about how the contemporary capitalist state operates
and the need for socialists and communists to develop the appropriate
strategies to confront it.

Let us return to the example of SYRIZA (one could also add Venezuela).
Arguably, SYRIZA is bound to succumb to either the Troika, or to its own
internal contradictions, but that doesn't take away from what they did
accomplish: developing links with social movements and taking governmental
power. SYRIZA developed a sober and sincere strategy that avoided the nonsense
of “changing the world without taking power” or sectarian irrelevance.

The questions that SYRIZA in office has to confront deepening social
changes, carrying out their anti-austerity program and possibly going further,
will no doubt be faced by similar formations elsewhere. The resistance of
existing state institutions inside and outside of Greece to any of SYRIZA's
proposed changes or breaks may in fact reveal the limits of Poulantzas' ideas.

V. Conclusion

Despite the limitations of Nicos Poulantzas in regards to his theory of the
state, social class and the transition to socialism, we should commend him for
asking the right questions in regards to theory and strategy. Poulantzas was
willing to confront the difficult questions of how the state functioned and
what revolutionaries needed to do.

In contrast to many on the left, both in his time and ours, he took
strategy seriously. Even if we choose not to accept Poulantzas' political
conclusion, his work and methodology deserves serious and critical engagement.

[21]Poulantzas
also deals with the rise of fascist exceptional regimes in Germany and Italy at
length in Fascism and Dictatorship (1974). See also David Abraham, The Collapse of the Weimar Republic:
Politics, Economy and Crisis (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1986) and my
“Communist Resistance in Nazi Germany,” Links
International Journal of Socialist Renewal. http://links.org.au/node/4122

Bob Jessop offers the following summary of Poulantzas' views of the exception
state in Jessop, Bob 2011, Poulantzas’s State, Power, Socialism as a Modern
Classic. In Reading Poulantzas, ed. Alexander Gallas, Lars Bretthauer,
John Kannankulam, and Ingo Stutzle, 46-7. Pontypool: Merlin Press.

“Poulantzas’s analysis of the exceptional state derives from his view that the
definitive features of the normal form of the capitalist type of state are
democratic institutions and hegemonic class leadership. Normal states
correspond to conjunctures in which bourgeois hegemony is stable and secure;
and exceptional states are responses to a crisis of hegemony.... Thus, while
consent predominates over constitutionalised violence in normal states,
exceptional states intensify physical repression and conduct an ‘open war’
against dominated classes...This basic contrast is reflected in four sets of
institutional and operational differences between the two forms of state.

Whereas the normal state has representative democratic institutions with
universal suffrage and competing political parties, exceptional states suspend
the electoral principle (apart from plebiscites and/or referenda closely
controlled from above) and end the plural party system ... The transfer of
power in normal states follows constitutional and legal rules and occurs in
stable and predictable ways. Exceptional states suspend the rule of law,
however, to facilitate constitutional and administrative changes allegedly
required to help solve the hegemonic crisis... Ideological state apparatuses in
normal states typically have "private" legal status and enjoy significant autonomy
from official government control. In contrast, ISAs in exceptional states are
generally subordinated to the repressive state apparatus and lack real
independence. This subordination serves to legitimate the increased resort to
coercion and helps overcome the ideological crisis that accompanies a crisis of
hegemony... The formal separation of powers within the RSA is also reduced
through the infiltration of subordinate branches and power centres by the
dominant branch and/or through the expansion of parallel power networks and
transmission belts cutting across and linking different branches and centres.
This produces greater centralisation of political control and multiplies its
points of application in the state. This serves to reorganise hegemony, to
counteract internal divisions and short-circuit internal resistances, and to
secure flexibility in the face of bureaucratic inertia...”

[47]Harry Braverman,
Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974), 254 and 284.

[48]The
Marxist historian of antiquity G.E.M. de Ste Croix offers a rigorous discussion
of class in The Class Struggle in the
Ancient Greek World: from the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquests (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1981). See chapter 2 which is devoted to class and
especially pp. 43-4 and 57.

[63]See Richard
Seymour, “Terrifyingly real: Poulantzas and the capitalist state,” Lenin's
Tomb. http://www.leninology.co.uk/2012/01/terrifyingly-real-poulantzas-and.html
The engagement between Poulantzas and Foucault is beyond the scope of this
essay, for some fruitful insights see Linder, Urs T. State, domination and
politics: on the relationship between Poulantzas and Focucalt and Stutzle,
Ingo. The Order of Knowledge: The State as a Knowledge Apparatus. Both in Reading
Poulantzas 2011.

[76]Thomas 2011,
289. Thomas argues that Poulantzas' criticism of Gramsci for not developing a
relational theory of the state is mistaken, since the integral state is in
fact a relational theory. Ibid. 285.

Comments

Thanks for this thought-provoking piece. I have only read Poulantzas's later work (State, Power, Socialism), and so it is interesting to see how starkly it contrasts with his earlier positions, especially in terms of strategy.

While reading SPS I was also struck by the similarities with Gramsci, and surprised by the manner in which Poulantzas seems to only recognize this convergence as quite limited. For example, his statements on the way in which the state goes beyond "repression and reproduction of dominant ideology", providing a material base for consent via compromises/concessions, is actually already prominent in Gramsci's concept of hegemony (and the thought of numerous neo-Gramscian intellectuals who came later).

Furthermore, his concept of a "power bloc" is surely very similar in function to Gramsci's concept of a "historic bloc", and links in with the issue of consent within hegemony, which Gramsci also suggested is achieved partly via compromises with certain sections of the dominated classes (who are therefore included in the bloc).

In terms of strategy, you make some good points on the risks/limitations of trying to struggle within and outside (against?) the state. These problems are wholly valid, and although I have reservations about a strategy of making "real breaks" or "non-reformist reforms"(Gorz), I still remain unconvinced by a Leninist strategy which involves "smashing the state". Although you address your grievances with Poulantzas's characterization of Bolshevism well, you don't fully address his concern that the state would simply not allow the creation of a counter-power.

In the case of Chile 1973, there are two issues. Firstly, I don't doubt that it is a pertinent example of the pitfalls of a strategy suggested by latter-day Poulantzas. However, wouldn't the full power of the state, capitalists, imperialists, also of been bought to bear against a counter-power built outside the state (if the MIR had expanded significantly for example)? Secondly, just as you say that the negative outcomes/aspects of Bolshevik strategy in the USSR cannot be used to write off a Leninist strategy as a whole, does this same line of thinking not also apply to the case of Chile?

I am not convinced either way, but one thing I am sure of is that we can't rely on a general all-encompassing strategy. Every revolution is heterodox, and strategy needs to be established according to the particularities of the context.

There are many other interesting aspects of this article but I don't want to ramble on excessively. For example, if "it is only the economic that determines the objective existence of a class", and you disagree with Poulantzas's separation of value-producing and non-value producing labour, then how do you define the 'labour aristocracy'?